Amazon tablets coming in September, suppliers say

Taiwanese component makers said Wednesday that Amazon is set to release tablets in August or September on its way to a sales target of 4 million units in 2011.

The launch is timed to gain momentum ahead of the Thanksgiving and year-end holidays in the U.S. and Europe, a source told DigiTimes. Monthly shipments are expected to reach 700,000-800,000 units.

According to the report, Amazon will utilize processors from Texas Instruments and touch panels from Wintek, with Quanta to assemble the devices. Sources also said Amazon would provide streaming movie services for the tablets.

Rumors of an Amazon-branded tablet have swirled for some time. In May, DigiTimes alleged that Amazon would partner with E-Ink Holdings to build a full color touchscreen tablet.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos declined to confirm during a recent interview that his company was working on such a device, but did say to "stay tuned" on the company's plans. Bezos did say that any tablet Amazon built would supplement the Kindle e-reader. We will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device, he said.

Though the iPad was initially viewed as a challenger to the Kindle, which arrived in 2007, subsequent priced drops to the e-reader have kept them apart. Last December, Amazon revealed that the third-generation Kindle was its best-selling product ever, despite the fact that many purchasers already owned an iPad.

Amazon pushed the prices of the Kindle down even further in May by releasing ad-supported versions of the Wi-Fi Kindle and Kindle 3G for a $25 discount.

Unlike the Kindle, however, an Amazon tablet is expected to compete directly with the iPad. Analysts see the combination of Amazon's video, music and app digital storefronts with an Amazon-branded Android tablet as posing a threat to the profitable iTunes, App Store and iPad ecosystem that Apple has created.

Apple has frequently spoken of the power of the number of credit card users iTunes has; Amazon is the only other player in the industry to have something similar. Amazon also has consumers trust that has been built up over more than a decade of good service, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair said last month.

Meanwhile, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicts the rumored Amazon tablet will sell as many as 2.4 million units in 2012. That figure, however, is substantially lower than the 4 million devices that DigiTimes claims Amazon is aiming to sell by the end of 2011.

Apple and Amazon are currently locked in a disagreement over the "App Store" trademark. Despite a trademark infringement suit from Apple over the "Amazon Appstore for Android," the online retailer went ahead and launched its mobile applications storefront in March. Apple stated in an updated filing in its ongoing complaint against Amazon that the company's service "is inferior and will tarnish Apple's mark."

All these people racing to make tablets and I just wonder, why would anyone want them? What's the long-term killer feature? How useable are they?

Yes, I'm biased, but I'd argue that iOS (iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad) are a platform. Yes, the iPhone 3G is not getting iOS 5, so it's updates life was 3 years. However, mobile smart platforms are in their infancy and there was a time when computers were obsolete in 3 years. the hardware is catching up now and the length of use will increase with newer devices. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Android as a full platform because of the fragmentation. For those phones that come out endlessly and get replaced quickly...just too short term! And whether or not those devices will get updated period, it's just uncertain! So, tablets that you buy once, hope to find some reasonable software and not get spammed or have your private information stolen, then watch as the Android platform advances but the company that made your tablet couldn't sell enough and has no motivation to upgrade your experience...

And what will an Amazon tablet run? If not Android I'd say it's a waste of time. Books on kindle, great. Kindle is lightweight, great for reading in the sun. Fits its purpose. This rumored tablet really couldn't be much better than a colored Kindle with a few bits of glam, right? If it is a full tablet not running Android, then even though you can count on Amazon being around and continuing it, you can't count on developers wanting to develop for a ton of new platforms. Building up a library of great apps will be slow.

The one most likely to be in an Amazon tablet would be the OMAP 4430, which is a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 chip with PowerVR SGX540 graphics. It's very similar to the iPad 2, spec-wise. In fact, it may even be more power-efficient than the iPads, because the OMAP's have circuitry not found in the A5, which reduces power consumption when idle.

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Originally Posted by urbansprawl

All these people racing to make tablets and I just wonder, why would anyone want them? What's the long-term killer feature? How useable are they?

They're pretty usable. Android 3.x is still pretty buggy, but it's getting better with time. When Ice Cream Sandwich is released, that's going to open up the floodgates, as app developers begin to make universal apps that work with tablets or smartphones, on-the-fly, just like iOS. Then, the Android tablet market app count will increase, especially if there's a big name tablet out there, like one from Amazon.

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Yes, I'm biased, but I'd argue that iOS (iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad) are a platform. Yes, the iPhone 3G is not getting iOS 5, so it's updates life was 3 years. However, mobile smart platforms are in their infancy and there was a time when computers were obsolete in 3 years. the hardware is catching up now and the length of use will increase with newer devices. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Android as a full platform because of the fragmentation. ... This rumored tablet really couldn't be much better than a colored Kindle with a few bits of glam, right? If it is a full tablet not running Android, then even though you can count on Amazon being around and continuing it, you can't count on developers wanting to develop for a ton of new platforms. Building up a library of great apps will be slow.

First, Ice Cream Sandwich is going to really help minimize fragmentation, and hardware specs among tablets are already pretty similar. Secondly, have you seen the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet? It's pretty thin and light, and if the Amazon tablet can come in competitively priced to the iPad 2, is similarly small and light, and Ice Cream Sandwich is available, the Amazon tablet will be compelling to a lot of people, especially current Android phone users who want an equal user experience among phones and tablets.

Amazon are in unfortunate situation in that while Kindle does not compete with iPad, iPad does compete with Kindle. I can't imagine anyone carrying both around, so if you have to pick one go for the one that can do all the other things too.

Amazon have to make this work so they may come out swinging with their pricing - heres hoping anyway.

Amazon may not have the App portfolio as has Apple, but it has the Content portfolio that Apple has. Books, TV, Movies, MP3. Plus they have the (percieved) image on being far more open about it than Apple ever will be.

With Jeff Bezos they even have someone who in terms of charisma and presentation skills can stack up again Steve as well.

And they have a very good track record in online customer satisfaction. I have used them for the last 12 years, vere since they started operations in Europa and never ever had one problem with them.

So if anyone should/could get it right, it's gotta be Amazon. If they should fail then the tablet market outside iPad is doomed or niched. And I for once would not mind someone giving Appple a good run for their money, after all we all benefit from this

Amazon may not have the App portfolio as has Apple, but it has the Content portfolio that Apple has. Books, TV, Movies, MP3. Plus they have the (percieved) image on being far more open about it than Apple ever will be.

They do have a lot of content, though their online video offering outside the US is pretty much nil. Their biggest problem is the horrible store UI, they don't have anything remotely as slick as iTunes. Have you ever tried buying downloaded music from them? It's a horrible experience by comparison.

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So if anyone should/could get it right, it's gotta be Amazon. If they should fail then the tablet market outside iPad is doomed or niched. And I for once would not mind someone giving Appple a good run for their money, after all we all benefit from this

That's like saying if Walmart can't beat Apple nobody can. Amazon are a retailer that has dabbled in consumer electronics, but only in one category and that category is somewhat unique. If I was in the market for an Android tab I surely wouldn't buy one from them. If it's not an Android tab then I think they'll have huge problems getting consumers.

Besides, who buys an object like a tablet without playing with it? Where are you going to play with the kindle-tab? At one of Amazon's retail stores? Exactly!

They do have a lot of content, though their online video offering outside the US is pretty much nil. Their biggest problem is the horrible store UI, they don't have anything remotely as slick as iTunes. Have you ever tried buying downloaded music from them? It's a horrible experience by comparison.

I get all of my music from Amazon. Their prices are consistently cheaper than Apple's and they have a really slick program that automatically downloads and imports the music into iTunes on Mac OS when it's done. Very quick and very easy after the initial setup is done.

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Besides, who buys an object like a tablet without playing with it? Where are you going to play with the kindle-tab? At one of Amazon's retail stores? Exactly!

Where do you play with the Kindle right now? In all of the stores around the world that sell it. Here in the UK just about every electronics store sells them and has demo units and the biggest retailer (3rd biggest retailer in the world), Tesco, has them for sale as well.

They do have a lot of content, though their online video offering outside the US is pretty much nil. Their biggest problem is the horrible store UI, they don't have anything remotely as slick as iTunes. Have you ever tried buying downloaded music from them? It's a horrible experience by comparison.

I guess I'm missing what makes it such a horrible experience. Or very much different than the iTunes experience. The only difference is the need for the intermediary mp3 downloader software, but once that's installed, it's really no different than iTunes. And Amazon has features that iTunes lacks, like being able to see all the different versions of an album on any of album version's product page (including physical versions).

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That's like saying if Walmart can't beat Apple nobody can. Amazon are a retailer that has dabbled in consumer electronics, but only in one category and that category is somewhat unique. If I was in the market for an Android tab I surely wouldn't buy one from them.

Why not? It's not like Amazon is actually building the tablet themselves (Apple doesn't really build iPads themselves when you get down to it either). I have more faith that Amazon is in for the long haul versus other sources of Android tablets, considering how they've redesigned their site to emphasize digital media so strongly. And right out of the gate, Amazon has the makings of an ecosystem that is closer to being on par with Apple than anyone else. Toss the Amazon Cloud Player app on the tablet and you've already got one feature that an iPad can't do even with iCloud.

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Besides, who buys an object like a tablet without playing with it? Where are you going to play with the kindle-tab? At one of Amazon's retail stores? Exactly!

Maybe at the same retail stores that sell the Kindle, you know, obscure little places Best Buy and Target.

Amazon may have the most credible Android tablet so far, but they won't catch the iPad.

I think the thing that ultimately separates Apple and Microsoft (or IBM in their day) from the rest of the wannabes is that both of those companies know how to create and maintain a computing platform. If Apple had been nothing more than a music player maker, they would not have been able to succeed with the iPhone or the iPad. It's the background with the Mac (and NeXT) which really allows Apple to deliver a complete, coherent computing platform (aka, ecosystem). Steve Jobs has been talking about the functionality of iCloud for more than a decade. He's been thinking about what computers should be his whole life. Same for Bill Gates and company. Amazon and Google don't have those backgrounds and experiences, or the brand that goes with it.

The only reason that Google and Amazon have an opening here to compete with Apple is that Microsoft has become so dysfunctional. This really ought to be an MS vs Apple contest, but MS has gone missing (in much the same way that Apple went missing during the 90s, except without the financial disaster).

I see even darker clouds in the horizon for all these iPad killers, or better yet wannabe pretenders. Sure they will sell a few. But Apple will continue closing the noose around their necks.
What do they think it means when Apple asks and expects 10% break from their suppliers.
They are definitely making enough money as is. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Thinking Apple might shave off a few dollars for the new and improved iPad 3
That is the only real competition.

P.S. Can anyone please tell those Wall Street guys that Apple really is worth a little bit more
money.

When Ice Cream Sandwich is released, that's going to open up the floodgates, as app developers begin to make universal apps that work with tablets or smartphones, on-the-fly, just like iOS. Then, the Android tablet market app count will increase, especially if there's a big name tablet out there, like one from Amazon.

First, Ice Cream Sandwich is going to really help minimize fragmentation, and hardware specs among tablets are already pretty similar. Secondly, have you seen the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet? It's pretty thin and light, and if the Amazon tablet can come in competitively priced to the iPad 2, is similarly small and light, and Ice Cream Sandwich is available, the Amazon tablet will be compelling to a lot of people, especially current Android phone users who want an equal user experience among phones and tablets.

Let's be realistic for a minute. I'm excited about ICS, but for pete's sake, Gingerbread has been out since december and phones released today are STILL getting Froyo. Only in the 2nd half of the upcoming year are we looking to finally see Gingerbread baked phones.

If Google doesn't backhand the OEM's about updates or Version shipping, fragmentation may very well remain a problem. The updates on the tablets though seem to be very quick, as most 3.0 tablets have already been updated to 3.1 and some are on their way to 3.2 so there is always hope.

The one most likely to be in an Amazon tablet would be the OMAP 4430, which is a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 chip with PowerVR SGX540 graphics. It's very similar to the iPad 2, spec-wise. In fact, it may even be more power-efficient than the iPads, because the OMAP's have circuitry not found in the A5, which reduces power consumption when idle.

It will be a big mistake if Amazon try to match, or even jump ahead of, iPad performance. That would mean more expensive, or not much less expensive, than iPad. No one in their right mind will buy a pad at more or less the same price as iPad. If Amazon is smart they would pick any hardware that will allow them to sell their pads real cheap. And by cheap, I mean less than $350. That's the only way it could be extremely successful, like iPad.

and 3. Android as an OS is free and has the largest market share(which may not lead to more $$$ itself, but see point 2.)

Wrong. Android as an OS is still far behind iOS as an OS in term of market share. (sound like too many people are brainwashed by the number of Android vs iPhone from Google to make Android look better than it really is.)

I see a number of respondants here claiming platform parity between Apple and Amazon. Amazon is going to be crippled by the continuing "it's going to be better next release" mentality that plagues Android to date. IF Google stops messing around and gets serious about bringing stronger coherence to the Android OS and the support structure that enables it, then you can argue that Amazon has an iPad killer. IF Amazon underwrites a substantial part of the cost of the tablet and under-prices it to try and erode the iPad marketshare, then there is a chance. Everyone has called various aspects of the Amzaon project as being equivalent to Apple's corresponding aspect. The key here is whether Amazon can successfully bring all of those elements together and make them work well enough to make their tablet interesting to potential iPad buyers. As several bloggers and commeters have noted, there seems to be an iPad tablet market, not a tablet market as such, based on market perfromance to date.

Amazon has to take each element that has been commented on herein and weld them all together into a substantial ecosystem that can go toe-to-toe with the iOS ecosystem. In spite of the rosy picture mikemikeb paints for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, it once again is that promise of something better that still is not quite there. That will hamper Amazon in the user experience arena, even though it will be better than Honeycomb - which was touted as the best Android tablet experience before it was released. Amazon has to absorb the cost of producing these tablets at fair market prices, where Apple is leveraging long-tern component contracts that allow them to get much better parts pricing - which could make the Amazon tablet a loss-leader for them - something you sell at below cost in order to attach sales of suporting items (like their content). So in just these two things Amazon is facing (not insurmountable) challenges. There are a bunch of others but let's stop here. Amazon can potentially bring a successful challenger to the iPad market if they are capable of addressing all these challenges. Much in the same way Michael Dell was able to sell lots of PCs - because that's all Michael wanted to do. Amazon is in this not to create an ecosystem, but to sell content and they'll create devices to drive that if they have to.

If you are going to insist on being an ass, at least demonstrate the intelligence to be a smart one

But they do have a very deep 1:1 relationship with their many customers. And for some of them (like me), they probably know they clients better than the clients know themselves.

Yes, so deep that they routinely recommend that I buy things from that that I ALREADY BOUGHT in a slightly different form.

So good at marketing that they offer me a 'buy these together' option which entails ZERO saving so making me wonder what exactly their point was.

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I do not work for them, but if they don't get it right, nobody will.

Plus name any other player (Google excluded) with the server farms in place. Even Netflix runs on AWS....and they migrated there from THEIR DC....

But it doesn't matter that Samsung haven't got a huge media selling server farm because you can take your Samsung 10.1 tab and buy from Amazon. Are you saying that Amazon won't support other Android tablets? That would be an enormous gift to Apple if they tried that. Amazon has no experience competing with real hardware makers outside of the world of ebooks and ebooks are a unique product because except for a few publishers like Baen you can really only buy them with DRM from your ebook hardware maker.

What they ought to be doing is investing some money in a native store App for iOS and Android that allows people to browse their huge catalogue of products both digital and physical without dealing with their geriatric web interface. If they don't they risk losing their status as the premier eBook vendor to Apple, because Apple actually seems to understand what people want in a shopping experience.

Of course it will be a loss leader. That goes without saying.
They will also refrain from releasing any sales data to make it seem like they're selling more than they are.

I really don't get why Amazon feels they need to get into the hardware business.
To seed the market, ok.
But their business is selling dead trees and bits, which they do well.
As a little subdivision of their enormous company, their hardware and os will always be second rate.
They need to focus on getting their bits on the bounty of good readers that now exist.

The really only solution the other guys have in competing with Apple today.
They ought to do a Wade, James & Bosh deal.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Nokia, Samsung and all the other guys should call a secret meeting, pool their funds together and buy out Apple.

I really don't get why Amazon feels they need to get into the hardware business.

I think what has happened here is that the division responsible for Kindle has seen that the iPad is exploding and threatens to relegate the kindle to history. The first law of management is not to let your job become irrelevant, so the guy in charge of that division will have gotten amazon set for a kindle tablet.

It really doesn't make any sense though - even if I close my eyes and concentrate on the idea of buying an android tab the names that spring up are HTC, Moto & Samsung. The name kindle brings to mind a slowly refreshing eInk screen and a full qwerty keypad on an eReader (what was that about?).

They have zero retail presence outside the US, and it took how many years for them to get Kindle into retail channels there? 3?

Did it "take" them 3 years or did Amazon wait 3 years to put the Kindle at retail outlets?That's kind of an important difference. Selling the hardware directly means more profit and having another retailer take a portion of that profit might not have been a viable option when the Kindle launched. I really can't imagine Amazon having any problem getting retailers to sell a tablet for them.

I really can't imagine Amazon having any problem getting retailers to sell a tablet for them.

It's not enough to just get them to stock it, you need to get them to actually display it, promote it, demonstrate it. This is where the Apple store does such a good job for Apple, they control the display - but even when Apple launched the iPhone in the UK they made O2 stores fit a big pine table for the Apple produts.

Amazon don't have that kind of pull with other retailers, not compared to Samsung or Sony, nevermind Apple.